Aboriginal Physics Newsletter

If we are ‘social distancing’, our movements are relative to others, and they are no longer ‘our own movements’.  Maybe they never were?  Maybe we have always ‘been distancing’ and living in a ‘Bumper Car’ reality (imagine ‘Bumper Cars fitted with electrostatic bumpers that repulsively avoided contact in the same manner as ‘social distancing’).  We have experienced situations in which we felt that we have been ‘given a push’ to do something, and then again, felt as if we have been ‘held back’ from achieving what we are capable of achieving, so does it ‘make sense’ to speak of ourselves in the DOUBLE ERROR (Nietzsche) terms of ‘NAMING-instantiated LOCAL, independent beings’ (first error) with ‘our own GRAMMAR-given powers of sourcing actions and developments’ (second error)?  Is that so-called ‘DOUBLE ERROR’ not an ‘abstraction’ that allows us to REDUCE our ineffable-because-NONLOCAL Bumper Car reality to an effable-because-LOCAL self-start reality?

In a Bumper Car Reality, we could continue to speak of our movements in the ‘first person’ as in the DOUBLE ERROR language and grammar construction, where we claim to be the full and sole author of “our own actions and achievements”, … departing from this tack only when these actions fail to meet with approval, rewards and recognition, in which case we resort to complex explanations involving ‘extenuating circumstances’.

This is where LOCAL sourcing of actions and developments gives way to NONLOCALITY and this FLIP is a double edged sword; i.e. our EGO likes to take credit for SOURCING actions and developments generally recognized as GOOD while avoiding being seen as SOURCING actions and developments recognized as BAD.  In reality, there is no such thing as SOURCING since everything is in a relational flux.  That is, in a Bumper Car Reality, there is NO explicit AUTHORSHIP as gives rise to EGO.

My uncle may give me access to his vegetable garden and orchard and I may profit by that (my bumper car gets a push forward), and the crows may beat me to the cherries (my bumper car gets pushed backwards, AND STILL I TALK ABOUT MYSELF IN THOSE DOUBLE ERROR TERMS… I did this, and I did that, … even as I might in the ‘Brownian motion’ of participation in a bumper car session.

As Schroedinger (in the same vein as Nietzsche) points out in ‘What is Life?’, … we persist in using language and grammar to RE-PRESENT our sensory experiencing of actions in DOUBLE ERROR based terms; e.g. I accelerated, turned left, then braked a bit to pass into an opening, accelerated again, and all of this is describing a bumper car session where movements are purely relative and NOT absolute, yet the language and grammar representation I am constructing makes it sound as if I am the full and source of ‘my actions’ and my developing ‘story’ or ‘history’.

Let’s be real!  We are pushed forward and held back or knocked back and sideways, … and then we construct our representations of this using the DOUBLE ERROR, saying: “I skillfully wove my way through the crowd so as to get where I am today. WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THOSE HELPFUL BUMPS FORWARD AND ALL THOSE UNHELPFUL BUMPS BACKWARDS?

How can a bumper car driver articulate what REALLY goes on?  And if we decide to just ‘tell it as if we were the authors of our own actions and developments’; i.e. as is what happens when we employ the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar, … what does this do to THE EGO?  We know that in this bumper car reality, there will be those that ‘make great advances’ and those that ‘get mired down and stalled’, and that our system of language and grammar is unable to capture what is REALLY going because its SOURCING is NONLOCAL and that makes it INEFFABLE.

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Introduction: Should Emergency Action Pre-empt Philosophical Inquiry?

Some would say that WE WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are long on ‘let’s get the job done’ capability and short on philosophical inquiry into what is actually going on.   This can boomerang since as complex problem phenomena unfold, aggressive actions based on overly simplistic models may be having effects that go far beyond the resolving of the issues identified.  In fact, the issues identified in an overly simplistic model will not be ‘real’ issues.

What comes to mind is land mines that do not explode until the detonator has been depressed a half dozen or more times, so that advancing troops will only find out they have gone into a minefield after they are well into the mine-field and unable to safely retreat.

Hopefully, our COVID 19 response will not be a severe case in this respect but it has the markings of having this type of exposure which ‘systems’ theorists refer to as ‘putting our ladder up against the wrong wall’ (so that as we climb the ladder to get to what needs repairing, it is actually taking us farther away from being able to address it.

If our understanding of the complex reality we are included in could be improved, it seems likely that our success in dealing with such unfolding complexities such as COVID 19 could be improved.

In any case, this essay explores how we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS have come to accept the concept of COMPETITION as a ‘real’ and ‘sensible’ social dynamic, though there is no such thing as ‘competition’ in the reality of our actual natural experience.  The basic dynamic is relational flow which is ‘gathering and scattering’ in the sense of BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium (quantum physics logic).

Nietzsche’s ‘anti-Darwin’ comments, together with his pointing out our WESTERN CULTURE chronic DOUBLE ERROR reality-reducing habit, is a critique of the suggestion that people are ‘things-in-themselves’ driven inside-outwardly by an internal ‘will’.  Meanwhile a ‘person’ understood as a LOCAL ‘thing-in-himself’ does not exist because ‘things-in-themselves’  do not exist.  However, once we use language and grammar to impose the DOUBLE ERROR, and once people start believing that we, ourselves, are NAMING-instantiated local independently-existing things-in-themselves with GRAMMAR-instantiated powers of sourcing actions and developments, the abstract groundwork is laid down and the concept and practice of ‘competition’ follows. (Note that ‘competition’ IS a DOUBLE ERROR based LOCALIZING of the SOURCING of actions and developments).  In the reality of our sensory experience, there is only relational transformation and there are no LOCALLY incipient SOURCES of actions and developments, as play a foundational role in the abstract concept of ‘competition’.

So, yes, we have this TOOL of the DOUBLE ERROR that allows us to break through the barrier of INEFFABILITY, and if we employ this DOUBLE ERROR tool as in the EAST, as INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE Wave-field (the Tao) that, ITSELF, lies innately beyond the reach of capture in language and grammar, we are in good shapre, but the issue is that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are treating this tool of INFERENCE of the ineffable, as if it were capable of delivering a direct and explicit understanding of REALITY.

We WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are so accustomed to using the DOUBLE ERROR as if it pointed to something ‘real’ that we rarely question it.  For example, we say things like; ‘The raging fire swept through the forested valley incinerating the Jones’ farm, along with farmer Jones and his cow Bessie, and went on to destroy most of Evansville’.   This is the DOUBLE ERROR construction of ‘reality’, but IN REALITY, … there is no such thing as “a fire” vested with the powers of sourcing actions and developments such as ‘sweeping through the valley and incinerating the Jones’ farm’.  What is REALLY going on here is TRANSFORMATION but we don’t put TRANSFORMATION into our language and grammar narratives because it has no beginning and no ending (it is ‘the transforming relational continuum aka the Tao aka the Wavefield) and it has no beginning and ending that we are privy to.   Since TRANSFORMATION is not LOCALIZABLE in space/time; i.e. it is the ineffable, all-including ‘Tao’ (Wave-field), we pass over it in silence and shift gears to a reduced but effable representation in DOUBLE ERROR terms.  The FIRST ERROR is to use NAMING (‘the fire’) to impute LOCAL thing-in-itself BEING to a relational form in the (transformative) flow, and the SECOND ERROR conflates the first using GRAMMAR to impute to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself (‘the fire’) the power of SOURCING actions and developments; “swept through the forested valley incinerating the Jones’ farm along with framer Jones and his cow Bessie.”

What we ‘dropped out’ of our intellectual consideration here is REALITY by inserting the FIRE based DOUBLE ERROR.  That is, we chopped out the REALITY of relational TRANSFORMATION which is the real dynamic, because it is ineffable.  It is ineffable because it is THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM.  ‘The fire’ is not a real thing-in-itself that can do stuff, it is HOW TRANSFORMATION MANIFESTS and TRANSFORMATION cannot be tied down to something LOCAL.

This ceaseless process of deferral is best summed up by Nishitani … For Nishitani, `fire does not burn fire’ nor does `water wash water’. The essence of fire is to burn, yet fire cannot burn itself. It cannot exist in self-enclosure or possess a simple identity. 

We have the same problem with ‘fever’ as with ‘fire’ in that it does not appear to have a LOCAL SOURCE yet we speak about it as if it did, which, of course, removes from our awareness an understanding of FIRE or FEVER as NONLOCAL relational TRANSFORMATION.  The green grassy plains of the prairie may transform into brown tinder dry dessicant ready to be tickled into combustion and as this TRANSFORMATION continues to  unfold, we FLIP TO DOUBLE ERROR mode where we speak of “A FIRE’ that IS GROWING IN SIZE and FEROCITY as if it had ‘its own LOCAL IDENTITY’ which is abstraction since everything is included within the transformation relational continuum aka Wave-field.

WE SAY … “THE FIRE IS GROWING LARGER AND IS DESTROYING THE TOWN OF EVANSVILLE” … ALTHOUGH AS NISHITANI POINTS OUT, THERE IS NO ‘FIRE’ IN THE SENSE OF ‘A LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF’ WITH ITS OWN POWERS OF ACTION, GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT, and what we are experiencing is NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION in which we are included.  And as with FIRE, so also with FEVER; i.e. what is going on is TRANSFORMATION of FIGURE-AND-GROUND AS ONE.  Only in a FLATSPACE pseudo-reality can we speak of the GROWTH of the burned-out area.  In spherical space, there is a reciprocal REDUCTION of the green area or in other words, an overall TRANSFORMATION.  The DOUBLE ERROR MISREPRESENTS the REALITY.

By using the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar we focus in on the LOCAL and lay it in our minds like a Cuckoo’s egg that hatches out as an artificial effable LOCALITY that distracts us from the ineffable NONLOCAL phenomenon of TRANSFORMATION.  The TRANSFORMING of LANDSCAPE manifests through flood and fire and alluvial erosion etc. The ‘fire’ is NOT a thing-in-itself, it is one of the ways in which TRANSFORMATION manifests; i.e. TRANSFORMATION is real, not ‘the fire’.

“COMPETITION” is similarly exemplary of our confusion-infusing use of DOUBLE ERROR based pseudo-reality as our ‘operative reality’; i.e. as the pseudo-reality that shapes our relational social dynamics (a very different reality from that of those who intuit themselves to be relational forms in the transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Tao’ aka the Wavefield).

“COMPETITION” is one of these backhanded-inference terms like ‘FORGIVENESS” that implies binary abstraction; i.e. ‘FORGIVENESS’ legitimizes the binary poles of RIGHT and WRONG and ‘COMPETITION’ legitimizes the binary poles of WINNER and LOSER.   The terms WINNER and LOSER are backhanded-inference that establishes the existence of something that can be ‘won’ or ‘lost’, namely something (an ‘event’) that is LOCAL in space and time like ‘A FIRE’.  Speaking in these reduced DOUBLE ERROR based LOCALIZING terms has us LOSE SIGHT of the primary reality of NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION.

These language and grammar categorizations like FIRE and FEVER are what we need to EXPLICITIZE relational phenomena so that we can representationally extricate and ‘effable-ize’ relational formings in the inffable transforming relational continuum.  ‘FIRE’ does not ‘burn’; i.e. ‘FIRE’ IS THE BURNING aka ‘THE TRANSFORMING’.

If we recall that the Wave-field (the Tao) is ineffable, and that we are forced to use shortcuts, in language and grammar, in order to allude to the ineffable, so that what we speak about is only inference of what lies beyond the effable, we will not accept anything ‘explicit’ or ‘literal’ other than as a springboard to tickle an intuitive leap to the ineffable that lies beyond the language and grammar based springboard.  The ineffable relational medium is the message, not the effable explicit content.  While the EAST remembers not to forget this, the WEST forgets what we were supposed to remember, and thus ‘the tool runs away with workman, the human with the Divine.

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A Philosophical Investigation of the abstract concept of COMPETITION.

The concept of ‘competition’ has been given, by us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS, a foundational role in our intellectual construction of REALITY.  This note explores the misconception of reality that follows from our acceptance of COMPETITION as something ‘basic in Nature’.

This note discusses the problematic concept of COMPETITION, with respect to how it shapes our intellectual impression of our SENSORY EXPERIENCE REALITY (our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka the ‘Wave-field’ aka ‘the Tao).

Competition is abstraction based on the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar which employs NAMING to impute the existence of LOCAL BEINGS, conflating this first error with a second error of GRAMMAR as used to impute powers of sourcing of actions and developments to the NAMING instantiated thing-in-itself.

There is no ‘competition’ where subject and object are only one (Schroedinger) and everything included in a fluid-dynamical One-ness.  Sure, the lizards will home in on a fly when it lands, like iron filings home in on a magnet, but it does not follow that the impetus for such convergent movement derives from the interior of the individual participants.  In other words, we must question on what basis we impute the forms in nature to be ‘independent individuals’?  Reflection shows that such invention derives from our own EGO-given impression of ourselves; i.e. by way of EGO based ANTHROPOMORPHISM.

Could the lizards not be included in the Wave-field dynamic, as relational forms in the transforming relational continuum?  Modern physics says yes to this; i.e. as Schroedinger points out, when it comes to fluid dynamics as in the Wave-field, SUBJECT AND OBJECT ARE ONE (i.e. FIGURE AND GROUND ARE ONE).  The lizards and other forms are developments withing the all-encompassing ‘field’.

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TRANSFORMATION OBVIATES PATHOGENS

(PANDEMIC: Sorcery based or Holodynamic?)

When the ambient conditions are right for an algae bloom or for a phenol phthalein solution to TRANSFORM from yellow to red the TRANSFORMATION is NONLOCAL.

Modern physics, wherein the Wave-field (the ambient condition) is the primary reality, informs us that NONLOCALITY is primary in our sensory experience of inclusion in the transforming relational continuum aka ‘Wave-field’ aka ‘the Tao’.  In the fluid-flow of Wave-field, FIGURE and GROUND are ONE (i.e. INHABITANT AND HABITAT ARE ONE).  This INEFFABLE topology is characteristic of holography (holodynamics). It is ineffable since figure and ground are in continual flux (TRANSFORMATION is the primary reality).

Classical physics and Western culture intellectual representation of reality is grounded in LOCALITY.  As Nietzsche has pointed out, the abstract concept of LOCAL being and LOCAL sourcing of action is the abstract artifact of the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar; i.e. the FIRST ERROR is NAMING which imposes LOCAL THING-IN-ITSELF BEING on a visible relational form-in-the-flow-field, conflated with GRAMMAR that imputes the power of SOURCING actions and developments to the NAMING instantiated thing-in-itself.

This DOUBLE ERROR reduces the ineffable to effable (we can’t capture in fixed words a universe that is in continual flux but must ‘fix’ a relational form by labelling it and then we get what the ancients called the ‘burden of concreteness’ where we have to manage with words, its actions and developments.

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This note explores the psychological-philosophical influences shaping our different conceptualizations of ‘reality’; e.g. as differ between WEST and EAST.  While I present this in a WESTERN style, my understanding accords with the EAST as does modern physics based understanding that is very different from the WESTERN ‘reality’..

In other words, this note explores how we are NOT using the TRANSFORMATIONAL understanding of what is currently going on (the understanding of modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.  In our WESTERN ‘popular reality’, our standard news coverage is ‘double error’ based.  The ‘double error’ is constituted as follows; the first error is NAMING that imputes LOCAL thing-in-itself existence, while the second error of GRAMMAR conflates the first error by imputing the power of SOURCING actions and developments to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself.   This ‘double error’ mode of representation REDUCES the reality of our sensory relational experience to an abstract-but-effable (articulable) pseudo-reality that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS are accustomed to using in our discourse (this ‘ineffable reality reduced to effable reality) as our ‘operative reality’.  The ‘double error’ reduces NONLOCAL TRANSFORMATION to LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.

An example of the ‘double error’ is where we say things like ‘The hurricane grew larger and stronger and devastated New Orleans’, or, ‘the fighter jet successfully took out the targeted enemy leader’.  In both cases we fail to mention the greater reality of relational TRANSFORMATION.  We sometimes ALLUDE to transformation by references to ‘collateral damage’.  That is, a lot more is going on than is covered in our simple and explicit language and grammar constructs.  For example, we speak of the GROWTH of our farm or of our town but THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “GROWTH” and such statements illustrate Goedel’s Theorem of the inherent incompleteness of all finite systems of logical propositions.  That is, the growth of cultivated land is at the same time, the (unmentioned) shrinking of Wilderness area.  We can talk about the GROWTH of cultivated area and we can talk about the RECIPROCAL SHRINKAGE of Wildereness area (which implies a spherical rather than FLAT space) but the limitations of language won’t let us go that ‘one step farther’ to capture relational TRANSFORMATION as characterizes the universe aka ‘Wave-field’ we are included in.  This inclusion-in the transforming relational continuum (aks Tao aka Wave-field) is ineffable; i.e. it is beyond EXPLICIT capture in language and grammar ‘double error’  terms of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES, notionally with their own powers of SOURCING actions and developments.

Reality is INCLUSION IN THE TRANSFORMING RELATIONAL CONTINUUM and while we understand it through our sensory experience of inclusion in it, because it is inherently NONLOCAL and comes in one uninterrupted bundle; i.e. ‘the transforming relational continuum’, … it is INEFFABLE.  The ‘double error’ is the use of abstraction to REDUCE the ineffable to something effable and this is where WEST and EAST (together with modern physics) part ways as to the understanding of REALITY with the WEST opting to employ the reduced-to-effable peudo-reality as the ‘operative reality’ while the EAST holds on to the ‘ineffable’ as the ‘operative reality’, employing the REDUCED-TO-EFFABLE double error based pseudo-reality featuring LOCAL things-in-themselves notionally with ‘their own powers of SOURCING actions and developments’.  This is WESTERN CULTURE “REALITY” and it is a CRAZY-MAKER!  The self-deception that can come as a surprise to us WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS is that ‘reason’ (logical analysis based understanding, otherwise known as REASON) is at the bottom of this CRAZY-MAKING WESTERN CULTURE; i.e. our natural intuition avails us to an understanding of the ineffable; i.e. our inclusion in a transforming relational continuum in which there are no LOCAL things-in-themselves because ‘everything is in flux’ (Heraclitus).

What this boils down to is that our means of understanding REALITY (our inclusion in the transforming relational continuum) can’t be based on LOCAL things-in-themselves with the notional powers of SOURCING their own actions and developments, as is the double error basis of REASON (don’t forget, our intuition, even as babes-in-arms, can give us understanding that transcends the ‘limits of logic and reason’; e.g. as infants our understanding of the world is topological and without the explicit self-other split.

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